Lachrimae
by mrhiddles
Summary: Thor died during the night. The night Thor died it did not thunder. "Always, I'd wished it was you." The night Thor died, Loki was cleansed in blood. (Posted on my A03 as well.)


"_If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner."_

_Marlon Brando_

OOO

Thor died during the night.

You would think a man of light and power would be gifted the honor of dying bathed under the radiance of the sun, that the lay of night would be reserved for the darker, more unhinged of the two brothers, but no. No, this was not a happy tale. It never had been.

The night Thor died it did not thunder.

"I had wished it was you," Loki breathed as he held Thor's bleeding neck beneath his hands. Thick red gushed through his fingers and he smiled. Already, the warmth of it seeped through to the skin beneath his clothes; lay drying on the metal of his bracers. Thor gripped his clothes like it would stop what was happening.

"Always, I'd wished it was you."

The night Thor died, Loki was cleansed in blood.

OOO

"Odd, that."

"What?" Loki asked, weaving the flame easily between graceful hands.

"The mortals, they call you a god of fire. It is odd for one so cold." But Thor was laughing beside him as he said it, the words slipping past his tongue like drops of slow liquid, easy and tasteless.

"I will admit I had not thought one with such frost in their veins could give birth to a gift so warm. They revel in it, at the very least." Thor frowned at the bite in his voice.

"I wonder at the kindness though. Whether warm or cold, you are not one for such gift giving."

Loki frowned this time. "Not true."

Thor snickered. "Oh? When have you ever shown such festive quality? I have not been granted audience to it."

Loki palmed the flame for the span of a minute or two longer, allowing Thor to squirm beside him as he realized with each passing moment the weight of what he'd implied. Loki let the possibility of his anger bounce within Thor until his brother could not even bring himself to eye the light of the fire he held so easily in his hands. Loki was angry yes, but why should he let it be known to Thor, his idiot brother?

"Loki if I—"

"They say many things about gods of fire. They say Prometheus gave the mortals the flame of life and death. That he was the one to birth their world."

Beside him, exaggerated in the flickering, snaking light, Thor's jaw worked, the tendons of his neck tensing as he rolled it, looking away. The curve of his lips spoke of a wryness, like he was trying to censure such a thought.

"He is an old god."

"An ignorant one."

"Funny," Thor snorted. "I would have thought you would have made friends with him. You are of a like mind."

"Him? An illusion you mean." The fire sputtered, mocking his words. "And here I was proven so indisposed to festive tribulations as _gift giving_." He smirked, but the cruel point of it was in the way it did not stretch to his eyes, shards as they were. Sickness roiled hot inside his breast.

The flame snuffed in a closed palm, and Loki jutted out his jaw, focused intently on the ground. Waiting.

Finally, Thor's voice rang quietly in the darkness, soft and shamed, "I forget myself, my words, brother. You have given us a great many things. Things that have made us forget how it was before, without them." And beside him, callused fingers found the strap of Mjolnir, resting lazily and weathered against the wrapped hilt. The surface marred with worn, muted scratches that spoke of thunder and light and blood shed in battle over millennia past.

Loki did not look at him the rest of the night and no more words were spoken.

OOO

Silence. The theory of relief.

Were they true things to grasp and hold onto or were they illusions?

Illusions like so many other well worded tricks.

OOO

"You have had too much to drink."

"'S not, not—true."

Loki was just as tall as Thor, though now he supported his full weight and he was sagging in his arms with every step, growing ever closer to the ground as he fought to reach Thor's chambers.

Then Thor was laughing, giggling like a small petulant child who knows they will get away with their actions. Loki squeezed his sides hard enough to bruise, but doubted Thor would even realize.

It was the middle of the night and the noise of the festivities echoed down the hall they struggled through. Loki knew Thor would have been content enough to stay and revel until the sun broke anew on the morning horizon, but knew he would be the one blamed when Thor complained of a headache at the first light's meal. Loki was also tired of putting on airs for the evening to satisfy the would be wrath of Thor had he not been able to put on such well practiced pretenses in front of Thor's friends.

And so he struggled, knowing his bed would greet him soon enough.

The Einherjar had already faded into their own world, resting and reviving for the next day when they would fight again and walk the halls of Asgard's palace, protecting them. Not that they needed it.

He felt a wetness against his hand and shook his head, biting his tongue when he looked down to see Thor was drooling. He had half a mind to drop him there, leave him for the morning to wake to the sunlight and people walking past, confused and humored by his shame. But Loki only gathered Thor tighter in his arms and muttered a curse at the top of Thor's head.

Thor only laughed again.

When finally they reached Thor's chambers, Loki asked, breathless, "Are you able to find your bed or are you helpless even in that endeavor?"

Loki received unintelligible babbling and so he sighed, biting out, "Utterly pathetic." He laid Thor on the golden floor as he worked the door open, twisting easily with a quick tongue the schoolhouse runework on the latch so that he could enter.

Hefting Thor in by the underside of his arms, Loki dragged him inside and left him towards the middle, forfeiting the burden so he could just stand and watch as the spittle ridden mess of his brother breathed steadily, eyes closed. He'd fallen asleep.

Shaking his head, he turned intending to leave, but then he saw it. Mjolnir. It sat atop the oak of a small table, stone recently oiled. It shone in the low light of the window.

Memories of a forge filled with burning coal and the hands of weathered old dwarves, cruel and bitter and sarcastic filled him. The black pith of their poking irons stirred those coals and the hammered gold around the room shimmered in the light and the heat. He remembered the way the heat had made his neck sweat, hair sticking there and to the sides of his face. Loki remembered the way it felt to watch a star melted down and molded to the shape of that hammer, what it was like to see a piece of the galaxy fitted to a handle, to be wielded and used. The power of the heavens in your hand.

And Loki remembered how it felt to see Thor hold it instead.

Thor's voice suddenly broke the silence like crackling thunder and it rumbled in the cold darkness of his room. Loki angled his head to hear.

"Lift it."

A hollow laugh escaped him and he looked back fully to see Thor watching him, propped on his elbows. Some manner of clarity had seeped through his drunkenness to reside in the blue of his half lidded eyes.

Loki walked towards the door, passing by Thor. But Thor grabbed his wrist and held him there. Loki did not pull away, too tired to put on airs here, in the privacy of his brother's company. Some nights saw him simply too exhausted to pretend, though not ever completely. To let fatigue rob him of his boundaries would be suicide in the face of Thor's rage, if ever applied.

But Thor didn't seem to notice. He hadn't been looking at him, only at the hammer.

"Can you lift it?"

Like the beat of the first drum of a sorrowful war, Loki said, "No."

"Try."

And from where Thor held his wrist, thunder crackled through his blood, and so he pulled his arm free, slowly, lazily. He looked at the floor.

"Go to bed, Thor."

The door shut but he thought he heard the sound of a sob just before it did.

In hindsight, it could have just as easily been a laugh.

OOO

The first time he'd seen a decent amount of blood he remembered feeling disappointed. It blocked out the pain and the concern of those around him as he focused only on the blood pooling around his leg. A large gash from a sword saw to that.

They'd been children playing at warriors. It was Loki's idea to use real blades versus the wooden ones Thor was content with. It had been enough to pretend at that age.

But Loki, though younger, already expected more out of the world around him, and so he spoke the words needed to make Thor, taller and able to reach the weapon racks, grab two hand and a half swords.

Thor had been the one to cut his leg open. Thor had yelled at him, angry at himself. Loki knew that, he _knew._ But it did not keep the feeling of guilt from welling inside him.

But then the blood started to spill to the ground he sat on and all other trivialities fell away. It wasn't as red as he'd thought. It smudged the ground in places where he thought it would run, pure red and quick. But no.

The sun was already drying it out, staining the pavement. Blooms of half mixed colors, like the spilling of a cart of blood oranges.

Loki had never seen so much blood. The pain radiated as a dull ache but Thor was saying he could see bone, and he remembered the way Thor pressed at the wound, hands covered in blood. He remembered his mother coming and demanding what had happened. He remembered being carried away in her arms, leg half wrapped in ripped linen, on the way to the infirmary.

He remembered it healing cleanly, slowly. The scar was a line of slightly raised tissue, lighter than the rest of him. He remembered the way he had never really felt the searing pain he'd expected. Just a dull ache.

But he remembered the disappointment most of all.

Blood did not flow freely, and it did not flow forever, pure and untainted.

Loki remembered feeling how much smaller the world was when he realized not everything stayed the same.

OOO

There was another time. A time different than the others. It signaled the beginning of all the many wrongs their lives were compiled of. And Loki remembered it just as well as Thor did.

They had both been sober, and it happened in the bright light of the early morning. They were young, centuries only having been shared between them. It was before the fighting, the killing, the desire that burned so, so many different ways. Before everything that truly forged them as the brothers they were. And he remembered it all as clearly as if he'd lived the moment each day. In a way, he did. It had been the final moment really, in all this. The closing moment of their childhood, the opening into the twisted, carnal, ravenous caverns their adulthood would be. Rife with violence and hatred and too many levels of sorrow. Too many.

This was before. When innocence ran rampant within their hearts, untouched by war, lies, and betrayal. It was a game.

An untouched moment.

And it shook the core of everything they were and would be.

OOO

Vengeance is a focal point. Had Loki not known this, he would have died long ago, rotted away from the innermost part of himself that no one was granted to see, no one, not even his brother. Had Thor known that Loki grasped so desperately at the one thing he needed to end, needed to destroy, to make cease, Thor would have left a long time ago. They would not be the brothers they were.

Were they?

Vengeance was a tricky thing. Slick like oil, left to pool at the surface of all it skimmed. It gathered in the green of his eyes and could not quite be hidden from the prying depths of Thor's own.

Had Thor known how deep his desire ran? The desire to end his life? Had Thor known, truly, the danger he was in just by pursuing him?

He did. Loki knew it. He knew it.

If there is Loki in this world, in any world, there would be Thor. Loki suspected the day they would face their greatest foe, their bitterest rival, the one alter able to end their own wretched lives, so long as they were, he knew they would be staring at each other.

He imagined the blood red tattered cloak hanging from Thor's broad shoulders, tired, sloping, a deep fatigue settled in those blue eyes of his that could not be rested. A touch of madness would have entered then, he thought. Like himself. Was it madness, this? Was it?

Echoes thrown to the wind, dying in dreams, being reborn on the rising of each new sun.

They would die, like this. They would kill each other. Every mortal-deemed sin they'd done so righteously would be thrown in their faces like the most vivid of memories—and they were, they were.

Vengeance. Irony in the way Thor deemed himself such. But what had Thor to avenge in this life? His own ilk? The way he blindly toddled after Loki like he could not be bothered to ever cease? No. Nothing. Thor made a mockery of the word.

For vengeance was intimate. It took root as an idea would, innocent, passing, linear. And then the claws would sink, the truth of it nestled into the heart like uru hooks, biting with spikes and breeding each day new, vile things. Things too wicked to utter. Things belonging to names of a violence bred to devastate, to obliterate, not just to kill. Vengeance bred destruction of all, and if one did not handle the notion as a lover of the dearest kind, it would not work. For vengeance consumed. It ate. It rutted and heaved heavy breath, hot and moist against your chest. It bore down painfully until it tore away flesh, pierced muscle, severed nerve and tendon and broke bone, until it drank and drenched itself within your blood, holding the cells of your very being in its ever brittle, delicate arms.

For something so massive, so encompassing and thriving, was easily snapped. For one who breaks so fully was broken just as effortlessly.

Vengeance. Loki knew it well. He held it close to him as he slept, as he woke, as he breathed. For it was an intimate thing and Loki was an intimate creature. He knew the words, the looks, the slight movements and twisting of letters to break any soul. The curling of lip to punctuate every slick blade that pierced the heart of any living thing.

It pleased him, this small luxury. This well earned, long suffering talent. To be able to so control others with a muttering and whispering of parted lips and hushed voice. He had yearned so long for the days when he could hurt with just a word, as he had been. For such yearning was borne of suffering. And such suffering, in return, was the perfect catalyst for fear of the most hideous kind. The kind that made those you would see pained, back away from a flash of white teeth. The kind that spoke to all others to look upon you once and drag the image from their heads, not worthy of the time they would have spared making you suffer.

Fear was a powerful motivator. Fear was the root of vengeance in a lot of ways. He knew the art of cradling one's secrets and tepid urges in deft, quick fingers, balancing them, dancing them about with bright eyes, before crushing them to ash. If he wanted. If he wanted. Loki could bend the will of the earth if he desired to. The soul of it. Any soul. Any at all.

All but Thor's.

So. What had Thor to avenge?

What had Loki?

Loki had his own failings. He had not broken Thor, could not, for Thor was him and he was Thor. One could not exist without the other. In this he failed, utterly, viciously.

How close was he to breaking? Loki didn't know.

He wondered if Thor knew the extent of how truly desolate their existences were.

Perhaps, then, Thor knew.

OOO

Thor had taken him in one of the palace hallways, once.

He'd driven into Loki so desperately, Loki had left a mark upon his own finger from biting it to keep quiet. It had not scarred, though maybe not fully. Loki thought sometimes he could see a sliver of white across that finger, but then the light would shift and he could not.

Thor had raked squared nails down his shoulder as he urged on deeper inside him until he finished, soft warmth blooming inside him in contrast to the sharp, tearing pain of where Thor had left thin, red scratches. Later, he'd left them, choosing to let them be rather than apply salve and allow them to heal faster than he meant them to.

Loki had rutted against the wall, groaning deep in his throat and pulling at Thor's thigh so hard he'd bruised him.

Thor laughed about it later on, but Loki could not enter that particular hallway for weeks.

OOO

Vengeance was a sickness.

It buried thick unrelenting claws deep beneath the skin of your back as it jerked and blew hot breath and heaved and wretched and moaned and _took_ of the body, the heart, the mind, the soul. It was a thing to bloody you and rip you apart and spill seething stench, of death, of family, deep inside, rotting away all that made you. Whether you wanted it or not, it twisted and churned, nonlinear, frightening in the sudden flashes of violence it makes one willing to strive for. Shocking, gasping, grasping weakly. Vengeance. Unjustified in moments of doubt, forgotten in the next, vivid after that. A cause without purpose. Always going, never ending, gears forever turning. A machine oil slick with sinew and flesh and the blood of a thousand thousand hearts. It ate, at everything.

Had he a purpose any longer?

Silence. It was bedded by silence, every waking moment.

Loki knew it was a sickness.

And in this, he held it even dearer.

OOO

What grief. What grief.

Blood lay thick and blackened, dried in splashes across cracked stone and roiled dirt. Flame licked at the field, at the bodies of men, ally and enemy alike.

His heart, so riddled with that frantic, fiery sickness of one so scorned, had stopped for an instant when he saw Thor lying there so still. So, so still.

The battle had been long and riddled with Jotnar far stronger than he'd assumed. Than Thor had assumed. Stupid, foolish Thor—

They were young, then. New to each other. Not so new to the world. Not so new to battle. But this. This was war, had been war.

Loki was only vaguely aware of the tears that fell when Thor breathed, chest rising shakily. Barely there, but existent. Enough.

Thor had raised an unsteady hand to his chin, eyes opening as blazing slits of blue in a face covered in grime and dried blood and matted hair. Loki tasted copper on his own tongue, felt the wind blow dry death through his hair as he looked down at his brother, nearly blending with the carnage around him.

He'd said nothing as Thor said some words of endearment to him. Words with meanings too deep to put name to. Nonsense. That was what it had been. Utter foolery.

Later, Loki had gritted his teeth, and forced himself not to smile the only one he was quickly being left with. Thin and gleaming white with a secret sickness only just finding the proper heart to sink into, the right mouth to slip words through.

He had sat by Thor's cot, lying bandaged and drugged into sleep in the medical tent that night. He had braided thin trails of wayward hair fallen along Thor's shoulder.

In the morning, Thor had remembered none of it.

OOO

Sometimes, there is a part of him that aches. Aches for the relief from such a sickness, such a burden.

Sometimes, the silence, the emptiness, is not enough.

OOO

The fear was just as indulgent as the notion of vengeance, he thought.

If one bout of tempting anger could so lull those weaker than you, those who once harmed you in so many foul, unnamable ways, could it be called indulgent? Enjoyable? Loki thought yes, most of all, yes.

For it was powerful, truly. He caressed it often, that notion, that element so thick with origin. Fear spawns life. Fear spawns death.

Fear is a bringer as well as a destroyer; a harbinger, like he was.

At least that's what the others called him. Loki paid no heed to rumors that floated about. Not many. Not all the time.

_Thin, brittle, snapping, broken—_

Thor was ever fearful of losing Loki and so he endlessly fought to catch him, to hold onto him and have him forever within his possession. Did it go that deep? Words once uttered on a virgin battlefield whispered to him, yes, it did. To a point. But then the logical, tempting side would whisper louder, pulling at his thoughts, and he would say no, no it did not. Perhaps for him. No? No.

_Frail, delicate, ensnaring—_

Brother possessing brother.

War truly was coming.

OOO

Once, he'd had Thor beneath him, body undulating, hands cloying, eyes and mouth wide.

Loki moved, coiling, rolling his hips, groaning softly in that way of his as Thor was rendered so completely undone under him. He scratched at his chest, as Thor once scratched at his shoulder, and he received in response a clenching of thighs around waist.

Loki had scrawled a path of ice across his chest earlier that morning, the red burns showing now in the dim light of his room. Voiceless scrawling in a language few remembered embellished in smooth skin, slick with sweat and the smell of animalistic union.

Sick, this. But the thought passed, hardly having been thought at all.

Loki leaned down over his brother, muttered his name and grabbed fistfuls of golden hair as he rolled purposeful hips and inhaled the scent of Thor, listened to the sound of twisted curses and blessings rolling off his tongue like water.

Mjolnir lay atop that oaken table like a symbol, untouchable and obscure.

OOO

Fear was consuming.

He wished to use it everywhere, and so he did.

Thor was terrified in many ways. He suspected not many were openly voiced or presented when they fought.

But some ways, he knew. He knew.

He knew Thor's fears in the way his blue, honest eyes shone with doubt on the rare occasion. He saw it in his face, felt it in his touch, when the killing blow didn't kill. He knew it in the way Thor grabbed at his neck to stall, to speak hasty words, fearing there would be no time for more.

But there was always more. Always would be.

For who was Thor without Loki?

Loki, himself, was fearful only of the cycle they found themselves entrapped in.

Spinning, brittle, broken things.

OOO

One time found them lying side by side in the secluded privacy of Loki's gardens. Hands tangled in wild hair, sounds escaping softly from licked throats. It was slow, it was quiet. Loki had not closed his eyes.

Another time found them standing, braced against a marble column, a long curved blade at Thor's throat as Loki faced him, nearly hissing in his face. Thor let fall a few tears, but there was a smile there. Loki didn't exactly understand it.

The time after that, they'd fought after. Blood was drawn. Things were thrown. A weak thing to punctuate a large turn. Loki had been forced to see the bruises marring his throat, his sides, the skin of his inner thighs, for weeks. Long weeks.

There hadn't been any other times after that.

OOO

Tired. They were both so, so tired.

It had been days, weeks, he'd lost track of how long they'd been fighting. They were tired, they were injured, blood lay thick across the ground, the plants, the cracked walls.

Mjolnir was lost sometime past the second week he thought. When they were beginning to throw fists instead of instruments of war.

The furious muttering of runes had split his tongue, dried his lips, and nearly cracked his teeth from the effort of it. The magic ceased to pour from him a little after Mjolnir was foregone. Whole cities lay buried underneath their terror and yet he could no longer identify which ruins laid in whose wake. The death was blurred, the ruin, the destruction.

Just like the blood on the ground.

Like some childhood whisper, Thor had uttered, "Brother, stop." He was pleading. Gripping him by the arms, leg placed awkwardly from just having blocked a kick to his side. "Please."

Loki's lips quirked and he let his head roll a bit. He was nauseous, slightly dizzy, and the lack of control his limbs were suffering was increasing with each well aimed blow. Thor's eyes hardened, with sorrow, with resolution? And then he was backing away, realizing Loki was not having it. Just like all the other times.

He was so close to snapping.

"You asked me to lift it once," Loki called throatily, throwing an arm out vaguely to the side. "You were too drunk to remember, but you told me to try. Why imply such a thing? Cruel, that, to dangle so rich an object before my face _knowing_ it was never mine."

Thor was tightlipped as he looked down, eyes raking blindly over the carnage.

Bone-white fear flickered there in his eyes and Loki almost laughed. So close, so close.

"You remember that then, do you?" Thor shifted to look at the ground somewhere nearer where Loki swayed. There was a gash in his side from a wayward knife Thor had turned on him. It spotted the ground as he staggered nearer. "You do. Then what about that other time. You were dead. I saw you die."

Thor dragged his eyes to Loki's. He gripped at a tear along his thigh, red painting the skin and leather there. Metal flakes of ruined armor lay all about, tarnished. Shattered nobility, sparkling in the half light. The sun was setting.

As he stared at Thor, thinking of days long past, he thought today would be the final day.

"I had wished it was you. All that time ago." And the words stung his dried tongue. "I wished it was you."

"I know. Brother, I know."

There was caution there in his face as Loki struggled to reach him, he stumbled, legs buckling pathetically and he was forced to reach out those last few feet for Thor. He caught him. Thor always caught him. They sunk to their knees.

His head dropped, sagging under the unbearable weight. What an uncanny burden it was, to have a brother, to have Thor. A possession so unworthy, something unworthy of being possessed. Worthy of so much more.

But then, as his forehead pressed to Thor's shoulder, bloodshot green eyes slid to the empty strap where Mjolnir should have been.

Worth was trite.

Had Odin still believed in his sons, perhaps things would be different. But they were here, dying in each other's arms, and so Loki knew. Things changed, he remembered with a pang of such heavy, internally crippling disappointment. Tears were falling then. Change—they were brothers of change. It was him. His fault. Always his fault. His worth in the face of Thor's.

Everything had changed.

The ice blade he summoned then, just as Thor tangled weak, shaking fingers through his hair, saying words Loki could no longer comprehend, crumbled and withered to dust. Dust that lay cold and brittle upon the broken, red stained ground. A wretched, broken cry tore from his throat. Even his birth right had fled his use.

He had nothing now. Nothing in the end. Nothing but Thor, ever there Thor. Loki heard the words mumbled on a tired tongue, feeble from _trying_ for so long. One could only try for so long. Loki knew that better than most.

"Loki, please, let this go. Let it end. Be with me, please, everyone is gone. Nothing is left to fight against, please. Loki, brother, please." Repetition shuddered on quiet sobs, the thunder in them having petered out long ago.

Loki grabbed at the metal clasps along Thor's chest, climbing and pushing until he was face to face, breathing forced and sketchy. He brought their faces together, closed his eyes and whispered with the barest touch against Thor's mouth, "I have wished it was you for a time long infinite."

He shoved Thor back, his head just barely coming close to hitting a large, half crumbled cement wall. Thor didn't bother shielding his voice as he called out, pained. Loki judged it was more from surprise than actual hurt.

He knew what it was like to hurt. He knew better than Thor.

That sickness curled his gut in cold, red hands and clenched, forcing the anger to well up anew, clinging viciously in the length of his throat, the spread of his mouth.

"I will see this done today. I will see an end come to us. I will, I will—"

Loki was straddling Thor, hands clenched in the fabric just under his throat. Thor tried for his hands, but it was weak. His legs kicked, working to push himself up. Loki heaved and brought him against the stone wall, moved anxious hands to the sides of his face.

A moment passed where Thor switched his eyes between Loki's, and then his brow eased, his lips quivered into the shade of a small smile.

Loki screamed at him.

There was the passing of Loki's name on voiceless lips and then Thor was closing his eyes, raising his hands to wrap around Loki's forearms. It was gentle, and it made Loki salivate with the anger he harbored. It had been so long. So ineffably long.

The screaming hitched and then, slowly, tears slipping by unheeded, Loki lifted Thor's head away from the wall and brought it back against it. Gentle. Teasing. And then, like something so contagious, so sick, he rubbed a thumb across Thor's cheek, smudged the dirt and blood there, and repeated the motion. Harder. A little faster.

"Thor," he said, pausing only once.

And then he brought Thor's head down once more. The hands squeezed at his arms, there was pain on Thor's face. Again. The keen in his throat rose, again, again, again. Shouting turned to screaming once again and still, he did not close his eyes. He had rarely closed his eyes.

This was what he'd wanted. What he'd aspired to for millennia. He would not close his eyes to this.

Loki bred fear, vengeance, oaths, and sorrow. He was change. He was Thor. And in this, in this one moment he would end all of that. Shorn it apart with the sharpest of blades until the blood that now splattered his face in warm, blistering streaks would cease. But no, no. He would have them there. He would have them burned there for all time to come.

He was as his brother was him.

He thought, as he cradled an ever softening skull, that there was thunder rumbling somewhere in the far, dark distance. The sun was gone from the sky.

Streaks of red newly painted the contours of his face. War paint, this. War drum beat, the sound and vibration of bringing Thor's head against the cement each time. War, all of it was war, always had been war.

The grip at his arms had slackened a long time ago. A sicker part of him wanted them to still squeeze, to pull, to tear, to press bruises against his scarred, pale skin. A sicker part of him wished to cease the torment, and lay amongst the wreckage right there, amid the blood, the filth, the broken.

But no.

Loki slumped back, pulled himself away, lagging, and sat with legs spread carelessly before him, arms limp at his sides. And he peered. The spill of tears and blood mixed along his cheeks, dripping down his chin, his neck. His brow twitched and he felt the matted mess of it catch in his eyebrows. His mouth parted, opening in a silent, wrecked _ah_. It was done. Finally.

Finally.

A numbness forced itself over him, there was no meaning inside him. Loki felt he was smiling, but he wasn't. He didn't think he was. Perhaps it was the dying light, the feeling of having finally ended the other, but no. No. It was night now.

Light did not thread through the clouds, absent as they were. The sky was clear and dark and dead. The moon hung, faded and lonesome, a spot of light in the sky that held no weight to him just then.

"Always, I had wished it was you."

Trails of slow red came to soak into his shoulder, the hand that had fallen over his thigh, unmoving. The wall felt unstable. He should move. Move away from the crumbling stone, the lifeless face there—

Half lidded eyes dulled, staring, and Loki no longer felt like moving.

"Always, I had wished it was you."

OOO

**This is the most emotionally draining fic I have ever written. I also have art located on my tumblr I made for this, so be sure to check that out as well. It was what inspired this fic in the first place.**

**Love for you all, as always!**


End file.
